Melissa Holding trained at the Royal College of Music and City University in London.  She works freelance as a performer and composer. Her instruments are the koto (13-stringed Japanese harp), shamisen (3-stringed Japanese banjo), piano and piano accordion.

In 1993 she was awarded a Mombusho Scholarship from the Japanese Government to study traditional music at Kyoto University of Fine Arts. She returned to the UK in 1999, and now performs regularly.  She has given concerts with members of both the Philharmonia and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and is currently playing with the contemporary music ensemble Okeanos who commission works from young as well as established composers.  They played at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2004 (performing works by Howard Skempton and Dai Fujikura among others), the Vale of Glamorgan Festival (September 2005) and the BMIC Cutting Edge series of concerts at the Warehouse in London (November 2005).  Among confirmed dates for 2006 are the City of London, Spitalfields and York Festivals www.okeanos.co.uk.

She has worked for the Royal National Theatre as composer, arranger and performer in Ted Hughes' version of The Oresteia (1999), and as music director for Chekhov's Ivanov (2002), both directed by Katie Mitchell.  As a performer, she has toured with Shared Experience Theatre in Nancy Meckler's production of Trilby and Svengali.

Her recent compositions include music for Garden of the Senses, commissioned by the Pegasus Theatre and the Oxford Literary Festival. She has devised and performed music with the Butoh group, Café Reason and has also composed soundtracks for Handmade, a series of short films for Channel 4.

As an accordion player she now plays with Kismet, a female trio, playing an eclectic mix of Eastern European and Celtic folk tunes and songs. They have recently completed an Arts Council-funded residency at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.

With East Whistle, a band drawing their influences from Celtic, East European and Japanese folk traditions, she toured Poland, Japan and the U.S. playing their own uniquely colourful and highly energetic brand of music. She has also played with the tango band Adokin, and with the bluegrass player Montz Matsumoto.

Her most recent film work includes sessions for As You Like It (dir Kenneth Brannagh), Modigliani (dir Mick Davies) and Semen, A Love Story (dir Johnathan Holland).

Her koto and shamisen music is available on CD.